Residents and drivers bumping along Carthage Street will have to wait another few months before the road is smoothed out.
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The upgrade of the East Tamworth thoroughfare was supposed to take place before the end of 2023, but the time-frame has blown out by an additional few months.
"It is expected that construction will commence in the first quarter of 2024," a spokesperson for Tamworth Regional Council (TRC) said in a statement to the Leader.
It comes about three months after TRC said rehabilitation of the road's surface would "get underway before the end of 2023".
The resurfacing of Carthage Street is needed following a $1.5 million upgrade to the 90-year-old watermain beneath the road.
The watermain, built in the 1930s, was slip-lined with polyethylene pipe during works that commenced in mid-August and finished about mid-October.
But now, all that's left are potholes, loose gravel and random square pieces of metal attached to the road, with drivers and residents having to wait through Christmas and the new year before anything is done about it.
What the residents say
Melba Dart lives on Carthage Street and she said "the surface is pathetic" and "it has been full of potholes for years".
"Everyone who comes to visit, it's not just residents, it's visitors as well, say it's the worst street in Tamworth. I don't know if it is, but it's certainly bad," Ms Dart said.
A few doors up the road from Ms Dart, Ann Peters said the road is in such bad shape that she thought they were still doing work on the street to fix the watermain.
"So, I sort of went, 'are they just going to leave it like that?'," she said.
"It's not significantly impacting us. But if a rock jumped up and hit my windscreen, I might feel differently."
Carthage Street resident Leanne Bielefield said "it [the road] is rough".
"When you drive along it, you can feel every bump in your car," she said.
"It should've been done. This is a very busy [road]. There's lots of elderly in this street," Ms Bielefield said of the danger she feels it poses to the more physically fragile residents.
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